


Grey Man

by LonghornLetters



Series: STB Bingo: Round One [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Multi, using your words like grownups
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28804716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LonghornLetters/pseuds/LonghornLetters
Summary: Someone's leaving gifts for Steve and Tony, but he's not hanging around.  Even though they'd like him to.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: STB Bingo: Round One [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2040717
Comments: 9
Kudos: 124
Collections: STB Bingo: Round One





	Grey Man

**Author's Note:**

> This fills the I4 square on my STB Round One bingo card - Organ Theft. This is also my Uno Reverse Card content fill.
> 
> In this universe, the Starks died because of Howard’s shit driving (drunk or not, up to you). So no Civil War assassination angst, kthanxbai.
> 
> The Gray Ghost is the book Atticus is reading to Scout at the end of To Kill a Mockingbird, and I’m sure you remember your English teacher telling you that Stoner’s Boy was an allegorical representation...I’m sure you’ll get the parallel here too.
> 
> Thanks to Stella on the STB server for advice and validation of life choices.

Steve moved back to New York and into Tony’s tower a week after he signed himself out of Walter Reed AMA following SHIELD’s collapse into the Potomac. He started sleeping with Tony a week after that. At first it didn’t mean anything. Just a physical distraction from the hole Bucky had ripped in his heart all over again. 

A month after Steve had moved back to New York and a day after he’d finally admitted that he wanted Tony for more than just his dick, he was leaving the Tower on his morning run when he almost tripped over a stack of books left on the sidewalk outside the private entrance just where Steve would normally put his foot when he stepped out the door. A quick skim of the spines revealed every single title he’d ever deemed worthy of a second checkout from the library, and right at the top lay a copy of  _ The Gray Ghost _ ; the one book he’d check out every time it was on the shelf.

“You’ve read that ten times, Stevie,” Bucky would say. “Why’d you keep rereading a mystery if you know whodunnit.”

Steve would just shrug, a twitch of his thin shoulders under his thinner shirt. “Like it ‘s all. Stoner’s Boy’s not who Seckatary thinks he is, but the Fair ‘n Square Club listens to him once they find him. Lets him say his piece.”

Bucky would just jam his hands in his pockets and insist that Edgar Rice Burroughs was better.

Steve knelt down and picked up the stack and flipped open the front cover of the vintage-looking copy of  _ The Gray Ghost _ . Inside the front cover in a neat, steady hand, someone had written:

_ Even after I knew the end, you were right. This is still worth coming back to. _

Steve ducked back and tucked the books just inside the door he’d just come out of, then turned back to the city streets and set out on his run. When he got back, he scooped up the pile of books off the floor and took them upstairs with him. He left them in the room he’d started turning into a library while he got cleaned up, but when he went looking for a bit of breakfast, JARVIS’s voice stopped him.

“Captain Rogers, Sir would like you to respond to his messages.”

Steve blinked up at the ceiling, even though Tony had made fun of him multiple times for looking at the ceiling when he spoke to JARVIS, then down at the kitchen counter. “Phone,” he murmured.

“Your phone is charging in your night table drawer.”

Steve smiled. “Thanks, JARVIS.”

His phone had half a dozen voicemails and twice as many texts from Tony demanding to know if they’d gotten a cat.

Steve sent back a quick:

> _ On my way down to you. Also, what? _

Then headed for the elevators.

Down in the lab, Tony was pounding furiously at a crumple in one of the shoulder plates of the latest suit where it had gotten mangled when he’d been tossed unceremoniously into the back of a garbage truck during a fight and the truck thought the shoulder plate was garbage that needed compacting, but he stopped the moment Steve stepped through the door.

“When did we get a cat?” he demanded.

Steve came to lean on the edge of the bench Tony was working on. “Never, as far as I know.”

“Then explain that,” he snapped, pointing at one of the tables that ran along the wall to what looked like a mummified rat tangled in a stretch of chicken wire. 

“That’s disgusting, Tony,” Steve said, wrinkling his nose, even though the rat didn’t smell.

“Oh, and that’s not the actual worst part,” Tony said, warming to his theme now that he had an audience. “Just...just go  _ look _ at it.”

Steve stepped over to inspect the thing, grimacing at the little claws frozen in the rictus of death and its teeth standing out sharply in the desiccated face. A scrap of paper hung from one of the hexagons in the wire, attached by a safety pin. Steve picked the note up and the same clear, neat handwriting from the inside cover of his books stared up at him.

_ I’d hate for you to do something to yourself and end up like this. _

“Jesus Christ, Tony, this isn’t a cat.”

Tony came over and stood next to Steve and the rat, and Steve smiled when he felt Tony’s fingers slip into his back pocket. “I know it’s not a literal cat.” He sighed and dropped his head onto Steve’s shoulder. “I just hope it’s not my first dissertation all over again.”

Steve turned to him a question on his lips, but Tony stopped him with a wink and a small smile. “A girl in my program, Regina Wellington, was getting ready to defend her dissertation around the same time I was, and she got a little...intense...over the person I was sleeping with at the time.”

“This is a little more than  _ intense _ ,” Steve insisted, poking one end of the chicken wire with a finger. “Where’d you find it?”

“Right outside the workshop door.”

“Hey, JARVIS?” Steve asked, glancing up at the ceiling, then laughing when Tony poked him in the side and murmured “geezer” at him. 

“Captain Rogers,” JARVIS said.

He pointed at the rat. “Did you see how this ended up outside the workshop?”

“Surveillance footage is on the main monitor now,” JARVIS responded.

They turned and watched as a burly man in dark wash jeans and a dark, nondescript jacket entered the camera’s field of vision, set down the rat, then turned and walked back out.

“Well that wasn’t very helpful,” Steve pointed out. “We didn’t even see his face because of that baseball hat.”

“J, anything else?” Tony prompted.

“Yes, but this is the best footage I have, Sir,” JARVIS said as apologetically as his programming would allow.

“Bring it all up,” Tony said, and the screen filled with all of the stills the Tower surveillance and security system had been able to capture. 

In every single one, the man kept his head turned so the camera couldn’t clearly pick up more than mere sections of his face. A chin here. A jawline there. A ducked head getting on an elevator. The tip of a nose poking around a corner. Hell, the thing on him they could see clearest time and again were his ears. Not that they would go far in the way of identifying him.

“Any biometrics, J?” Tony finally asked after they’d been staring at the collection of images for close to five minutes.

“Height, weight, and build have been sent to your server.” JARVIS paused. “He does not appear to match any records with the New York Department of Motor Vehicles.”

Tony nodded absently as he swiped the pictures together into a stack and then into a folder called Creepy McCreeperface. “Expand it nationwide. See if anything pings.”

“You gonna keep after it a while longer?” Steve asked, running his fingers over the half-reshaped shoulder plate.

“Yeah, I’m feeling...fiddly.”

“Okay,” Steve agreed easily and wrapped him up in a tight hug. “We’ll figure this out.”

Tony let himself be hugged for a bit, but he eventually got fidgety in Steve’s arms. “I’ll be up in a while,” he promised as Steve let him go with a final squeeze.

Steve was almost at the workshop door, and he turned back and smiled at Tony. “I’ll wait up.”

~~*~~

A few weeks later, Steve stepped into one of the Tower elevators on his way back from yet another CIA debrief on the whole helicarrier debacle, and inside a paper bag from Blick Art Supply was sitting on the floor.

“JARVIS?” Steve asked.

“Scans do not indicate any explosive, chemical, or biological agents.”

When he peered into the bag, he found a collection of the sorts of drawing materials he’d always fantasized about owning if he and Bucky had ever had two nickels to rub together. A pair of hardbound sketchbooks, a set of high-quality drawing pencils, charcoal free of lumps, and a box of oil pastels so smooth they felt like butter gliding across the page. Slipped down against one side of the bag was a card from the store that proclaimed “The gift of art...just for YOU!” across the top, and in the blank white space for a message, someone had written:

_ The scratch of your pencils sounds like home. _

He grabbed the bag when the elevator opened, and he turned to go put his new art supplies away but stopped short at the sight of Tony staring at something on the bartop. 

“Everything okay?”

Tony just shook his head down at whatever held his attention. “It’s happened again.”

Steve set the bag down by the elevator and came over to the bar. “What’s happened again?”

Tony pointed down at a mess of tangled metal that, while scorched, still showed hints that it had once been hot rod red. “This used to be one of my in-development helmets.”

Steve reached out to touch the blackened, twisted metal, but Tony slapped his hand away. “Don’t. JARVIS hasn’t scanned it for bio-data yet.”

Steve curled his hands into his jeans pockets instead. “How...what  _ happened _ ?”

Tony shrugged. “I was in California last week working on the West Coast arc reactor, and I’d been planning a test flight with this helmet when I got home, but then I got back here and couldn’t find it, and I’d finally decided today I was gonna break down and just ask J what I’d done with it, but then I got down to the ‘shop and got busy, and when I came up here for a drink, it was just sitting here in the middle of the bar.”

Steve’s eye snagged on something white poking out of one of the metal folds. “JARVIS, could you scan this for the...bio-data? Tony was talking about?”

“There are no substantive fingerprints or DNA deposits on available surfaces.”

Steve nodded then grabbed the two edges of the metal and slowly prised them open enough for a slip of plain white paper to flutter down onto the bar. It landed face up, and the words on it made Steve’s gut clench.

_ Your head could’ve been inside this. _

“Oh my God, Tony,” Steve gasped, dropping the twisted remains of the helmet down onto the bar with a thunk. “You have to--”

“What?” Tony asked. “Call the police? What the actual hell would  _ they _ be able to do? This was in a secure facility. Someone broke in and stole it, without getting detected mind you, and then broke  _ back in _ to leave it here.”

“JARVIS, did you notice anything? Either time?” Steve asked, refusing to give in to Tony’s pessimism quite yet.

“All footage and images have been saved to the relevant folder.”

“Creepy McCreeperface?” Steve asked, sending the ceiling a smirk.

“Indeed,” JARVIS agreed.

“Don’t think I don’t hear you two making fun of me,” Tony said with a smile.

“I should hardly call it ‘making fun,’” JARVIS protested.

Later that evening, Steve detoured back to the elevator to grab his own mysterious gift, then headed for what Tony had started calling The Fortress of Solitude. He hoped the fact that Tony’s mysterious visitor had come to the tower twice would give him something a bit more workable. He set the bag of supplies next to the drafting table he’d found at an estate sale in Crown Heights, not quite willing to just use them until he’d done a little investigating.

“JARVIS, was there any footage of whoever left the art supplies?” Steve asked.

“Displaying now.” JARVIS displayed six images of the same man who had delivered Tony’s trapped rat and the mangled helmet. 

Working with fewer images meant Steve wasn’t instantly overwhelmed by the volume of data on the screen, and he let himself just sit and look at the images JARVIS had pulled up for him. The man was wearing dark jeans and a dark blue henley under the same leather jacket as the first time. A black baseball cap with no logo covered his shoulder-length hair and rode low on his brow, obscuring the details of his face. Everything about him was designed to make eyes slide over him. To make him forgettable. 

“Grey Man,” he murmured as he reached for the sketchbook lying on his drawing table and a pencil. 

“Captain Rogers?” JARVIS asked.

“Grey Man,” Steve repeated, sketching in the outline of their visitor’s image where he’d faced one of the cameras in 3/4 profile and even lifted his line of sight from the ground. “It’s this idea that…” he frowned down at the image then switched pictures, bringing up a slightly more high-res shot. “The idea that the best way to hide is to hide in plain sight. Blend in with the crowd.”

“I don’t see how dressing like a...like  _ this _ is going to help him blend in,” Tony’s voice from the doorway made Steve look up. 

Steve smiled. “What’s your corporate dress code?”

Tony shrugged. “Depends. Executive, finance, and legal are all business professional. Suits all day every day.”

“And R&D? Coding? Behind the scenes advertising and PR?” Steve asked down at his page.

“They can’t wear pajamas.”

“Can they wear this?” He pointed at the screen.

“Sure.”

Steve tapped the page. “Grey...man…” he stared at the profile on his page then at his hand. 

“Steve?” Tony’s voice came from right at his elbow. “You okay?”

“It--I think…” he tilted the page so Tony could see. “I think it’s Bucky.”

“Are you sure?” Tony asked, coming over to peer at the image Steve had been roughing out in his sketchbook.

Steve shrugged. “This…” he let his pencil trace the outline of Bucky’s jawline again. “I could draw this in my sleep...it feels like him.”

“If there’s anyone’s muscle memory I’d trust, it’s yours,” Tony said. He trailed a finger down the sketch of Bucky’s face. 

“Wonder what he wants,” Steve murmured. 

~~*~~

Knowing their visitor was Bucky Barnes didn’t actually mean Steve and Tony could do anything about it. The tower security team, trained as they were, would be no match for a possibly-still-brainwashed assassin determined to gain entry. 

“He remembers you,” Tony insisted, looking at the books and art supplies Bucky had left for Steve on his first two visits a couple of nights after Steve’s revelation.

“So what about you?” Steve had asked, wrapping his arm around Tony’s waist. “Why’s he leaving you rat mummies and mangled prototype helmets?”

Tony shrugged. “Unbridled jealousy I assume.”

Steve shook his head against Tony’s shoulder. “He’d’a loved you. Science was always his favorite.”

“You were his favorite too,” Tony murmured against Steve’s head before dropping a kiss into his hair. “Howard showed me the personal letters of yours he saved.”

Steve sighed a little bit sad. “I did love him. But…” he shook his head again, this time a sign of helplessness instead of the disagreement from earlier. “I can’t...I can’t expect that he’s the same man, you know?”

“I know,” Tony agreed softly. “But you can’t assume there aren’t pieces that still remain either.”

Steve squeezed Tony’s waist. “When did you get so wise?”

“Gotta get something apart from grey hair as I get older,” Tony teased.

~~*~~

Steve was lying on the couch reading  _ Mildred Pierce _ when the  _ thunk _ of the tower going into a hazmat lockdown dragged him forcibly out of his book.

“JARVIS, what’s going on?” Steve asked, abandoning his book on the coffee table.

“A minor explosion on level 93. No structural damage has been detected, so there is no need to evacuate.”

A couple of minutes later, the ping of the elevator preceded a coughing Tony staggering into the living area. Steve jumped up and rushed to give him a hand, guiding him gently over to the sofa and easing him down.

“Tony, are you okay? What happened?”

Tony coughed a few more times then eased himself back against the sofa cushions with a raspy sigh. “I restarted that helmet. The one Bucky Bear stole and destroyed.”

“And threatened to have your head in next time, I remember.”

Tony shook his head. “See, I’m not so sure about that anymore.”

“How?” Steve asked.

“You remember what the note in the helmet said?” Tony asked.

“Sure, ‘your head could’ve been inside this,’” Steve parroted. They’d saved all of the notes on paper inside of Steve’s copy of The Gray Ghost.

“Well it turns out there’s a catastrophic short in the helmet. In the way the HUD minimizes when you open the helmet,” Tony said.

Steve blinked at him. “Oh. Well, what happens?”

Tony laughed. “That’s the thing. The whole helmet melts. The heat’s too much for the alloy and it just…” he mimed something boiling over and flowing away. “I’d have been killed if that happened when I was wearing it.”

“Is that why we’re in a hazmat lockdown?” Steve asked.

Tony nodded. “I’m venting the workshop. We shouldn’t have to evacuate. But think...if Buckaroo was still all Manchurian Candidate, he’d have let me melt my own face off.”

“I guess so…” Steve still wasn’t convinced. 

Tony flopped sideways so he could lay his head and shoulders in Steve’s lap. He batted his eyelashes up at Steve and offered him his most winning smile. “What do I need to say to convince you?”

Steve shrugged. “I don’t know if there’s anything you can say. I mean, bringing me books and art stuff is one thing, but...but everything he’s brought you has been so  _ violent _ .”

“He doesn’t know me like he knows you,” Tony said easily. “He’s probably trying to...oh, I don’t know, let me know he cares or something, but he’s probably trying to show  _ you _ that he remembers something about who you two used to be.” He looked up at Steve again. “Who  _ did _ you two used to be?”

Steve threaded his fingers through Tony’s hair while he tried to get his thoughts in order. “I--we--”

“I wasn’t your first, was I?” Tony asked quietly. 

Steve shook his head. “We...it’s against Army regulations to wear someone else’s dog tags or to mix and match them. Didn’t stop us, though. We wanted--” he took a shaky breath. “We wanted to be together. No matter what. After--after Azzano, I refused to leave him and he refused to let me go off on my own.”

Tony turned his face into Steve’s stomach and wrapped his arms around Steve’s waist. “You two must’ve been a force to be reckoned with.”

Steve huffed a quiet laugh. “Phillips didn’t know what to do with us sometimes.”

“Look, Steve, if you want--”

“I want  _ you _ ,” Steve said. “I loved Bucky...hell, I still do, but I’m not going to throw away the man I love  _ now _ for some kinda maybe.”

“Can I...I want to keep an eye out for him for you,” Tony said. “He’s not initiating these moments of contact for no reason.”

Steve kept petting Tony’s hair for a moment before he spoke. “You can keep an eye out. But I’m not sure you’ll find him unless he wants to be found.”

~~*~~

They spent most of the spring close to the tower as Steve continued to bounce between New York and DC dealing with the fallout from SHIELD’s implosion. Tony spent the same time dealing with unwelcome overtures from an old college classmate, Aldrich Killian, who thought an injectable version of the serum would create him a private army of supersoldiers, but, in reality, they all just died of extreme fevers following injection. 

The closer they got to Steve’s birthday with no sign of Bucky, the more anxious Steve got. He’d started inventing reasons to leave the tower solely in the hopes that he’d return to a sign Bucky was still nearby, but by the end of June, the silence was nearly crushing him.

“We’ll get something for him then,” Tony said matter-of-factly when Steve came moping into the penthouse one afternoon the week before his birthday. “What’s something he always wanted?”

Steve hummed thoughtfully.

“Nothing Winter Soldier-y,” Tony added. “He doesn’t need reminding of that. Especially not with the Fourth coming up...fireworks probably aren’t going to be super great for him.”

“Stuff like his sisters to marry good men and for his ma to have a radiator that worked without freezing aren’t really doable.”

“Not as such, no,” Tony agreed, shoving Steve onto the couch and settling in his lap. “Something a little frivolous.”

“Records,” Steve eventually mumbled into Tony’s neck. “We could barely ever afford to buy anything extra, between food, heat, medicine, and clothes. And Bucky...he loved music. Loved listening to it, singin’ to it…” Steve smiled. “He loved to dance.”

“Who should we pick?” Tony asked gently.

Steve smiled, touched by Tony’s willingness to reach out to his first love. “I’ll think about it and make a list.”

The night before Steve’s birthday, they boxed up the collection of records they’d scrounged from a handful of shops across the city. It had been a fun couple of afternoons walking around the boroughs in the early summer warmth, Tony complaining about a lack of shade and Steve laughing and letting Tony stand in his shadow at street corners. 

“JARVIS Clause, where should we leave these to give Buckaroo the best chance of finding them?”

“Sergeant Barnes has either gained access to the tower or vacated it every time via the private garage,” JARVIS said.

Down in the garage, they set the box down next to the elevator, and Steve attached the slip of paper with the notes they’d each written on it.

_ All the records we promised each other we’d listen to. _

_ It’s not modern, but if it gets you moving, who am I to complain. _

Tony took out his tablet and angled one of the two cameras that normally covered the elevator to watch the box directly then whipped out a camping chair and sat down. “Okay, one return present ready to go.”

Steve laughed as he tugged gently at Tony’s arm. “Come on, Tony, you can’t just sit here and wait for him to show up. It’s like Santa.”

Tony rolled his eyes, but let Steve tug him up to standing. “Okay, okay. But I want it on record that we’re never going to catch him if we just let him come and go like some sort of feral cat.”

Steve smiled sadly as they got into the elevator. “He’ll come to us...if he wants to.”

Tony smoothed his fingers over the little wrinkle between Steve’s eyes. “He’s lucky to have someone like you.”

Steve swooped in and kissed Tony fiercely. “Like us.”

Late that night, a heavy thump out in the main room of the penthouse jolted Steve awake. He gently extricated himself from Tony’s octopus grip and grabbed his shield as he slipped out of the bedroom. 

In the lounge, the ceiling flood lights illuminated the massive bulk of a Wurlitzer organ. Steve whipped around towards the elevator just in time to see the doors sliding closed on Bucky’s slightly panicked face.

“JARVIS, can you hold him in there?” Steve asked as he made a dash for the stairs.

“Elevator stopped and secured,” JARVIS’s voice echoed down the stairwell over the slap of Steve’s bare feet on the concrete.

“Public use elevators begin on level 87,” JARVIS said, making Steve skid to a stop and yank open the 87th floor’s stairwell access door. 

One of the public elevators stood open, reminding Steve of that godawful  _ Devil _ movie Natasha had made him watch with her the last time he’d gone to DC to explain to the House Intelligence Committee again that the Hydra infiltration of SHIELD had not been his fault. He got in and slapped the button that would take him as close to the private garage as he could get. 

“JARVIS, what am I gonna do?” Steve asked, fiddling with the shield straps on his arm.

“I believe returning the Ebbets Field organ to the Baseball Hall of Fame will have to enter into your calculation at some point,” JARVIS hedged.

Steve rolled his eyes. “Thanks for the advice.”

“My pleasure.”

The elevator doors slid open in the public lobby, and it was a short run from there to the restricted access entrance that led down to Tony’s private garage.

“Okay, bring him down, J,” Steve said, once he’d positioned himself in front of the closed elevator doors.

“If he retreats, can you override his input so the doors’ll only open down here or up in the penthouse?” Steve asked as he listened to the faint hum of the elevator coming closer.

“I can,” JARVIS said. “Although I question the efficacy of trapping someone into a conversation.”

“Well I question the efficacy of this weird give-a-gift-and-run-away  _ thing _ , so…” Steve trailed off as the elevator doors slid open to reveal Bucky.

Bucky stepped out of the elevator, eyeing Steve warily like he might throw the shield at him. “What’re--” he cleared his throat. “What’re you doing down here?”

“Looking for the guy leaving me books and art supplies,” he answered, trying to keep his voice light.

Bucky shrugged. “You found him,” he muttered. 

Steve smiled. “Yeah?”

Bucky jerked his head in a stiff nod.

“Did--did you see your records?” Steve pointed at the box full of vinyl.

Bucky stepped over and reached out with one gloved hand, and let his fingertips rest gently on the cardboard spines of the record sleeves. 

Steve nodded at the box. “All the ones you used to know how to dance to.”

“That fella you got upstairs teach you how to dance?” Bucky asked, his voice a little sad.

Steve set down the shield and took a tentative step closer. “You know I’ve got two left feet.”

Bucky shook his head down at the open box. “No you don’t.”

The sharp ding of the elevator made them both jerk their heads towards the doors as they slid open and Tony stumbled out, still tugging a shirt into place. “What the hell are you two doing down here?” he demanded.

Steve pointed at Bucky. “I heard him in the penthouse and didn’t want to let him just vanish on us again.”

A ghost of a smile lit Bucky’s face. “I got trapped in the elevator.”

“My elevators don’t  _ trap _ people,” Tony cried, looking positively offended.

Bucky pointed back at Steve. “Depends on who you let run ‘em.”

“I panicked, alright?” Steve snapped, but he smiled softly at Bucky even as he said it.

“I can see how you two gave Phillips fits,” Tony muttered. He sighed. “Look, it’s three thirty in the morning. Can we please go upstairs and talk this out like grownups?” 

Bucky shrugged and nodded then stepped towards the open elevator and actually let Tony usher him in, although Tony, Steve noticed, didn’t actually touch Bucky. When he got into the car, he turned back and smirked at Steve, his left hand held out. “You comin’, Rogers?”

Upstairs, Tony stopped dead in the main room, and it was only Bucky and Steve’s enhanced reflexes that allowed them to dodge the sudden stumbling block Tony represented. 

“What the hell is this?” Tony asked.

“It’s uh…”

“That’s the organ from Ebbets Field,” Bucky said, like Tony was foolish for not immediately recognizing the Dodgers’ home field pipe organ. “Got it for Stevie’s birthday. He loved going to Dodgers’ games.”

“And  _ how _ did you...” Tony trailed off with a shake of his head. “Well, it certainly brings new meaning to ‘organ theft.’”

Steve stepped over to the organ and tapped out a few notes then started picking out “Take Me out to the Ballgame” with one finger. “They don’t play here anymore,” Steve said a little wistfully.

“I know,” Bucky said as he came and sat on the bench then slid the birthday card sitting on the sheet music rack towards Steve. A cartoonish picture of a cake absolutely laden with candles sat over ‘Your birthday is becoming a serious fire hazard.’ Inside, Bucky had written:

_ This still sounds like summer. _

“It really does,” Steve agreed, dropping down onto the bench next to Bucky. He sighed, suddenly tired. “Why, Buck?”

“For weeks I couldn’t remember anything about you. Then when stuff started comin’ back, it felt like just--just little things that didn’t matter. Puttin’ newspapers in your shoes to make ‘em fit. Carrying your books home from the library when you couldn’t ‘cause your breathing and your heart were givin’ you too much trouble.”

“Complaining about wanting coal that didn’t bump and pencils that didn’t skip,” Steve offered.

“And now, look at you,” Bucky said. “You got all of that.”

“But what about Tony?” Steve asked. “Why’d you bring him into it?”

Bucky shrugged and fiddled with the edge of one of the organ keys. “What d’you get the guy who’s got everything?”

“Dead rats and menacingly tested helmets,” Tony offered from where he’d taken up leaning against the edge of the organ on Bucky’s other side.

“I didn’t mean it like it sounded,” Bucky protested. “You--you got stuck in that trash truck, and--”

“And you thought next time could be worse,” Tony finished.

Bucky nodded. “And it turned out I was right.”

“Yeah, but how’d you know?” Tony asked. “It’s not like  _ Howard _ was building Iron Man suits.”

“No…” Bucky trailed off, seemingly stumped by his own instinct.

Steve leaned his shoulder into Bucky’s arm. “Anything Howard built would blow up nine times out of ten the first time he turned it on.”

“And you still got in his Vita-Ray tube?” Tony asked.

Steve shrugged. “What’d I have to lose?”

“Oh my God,” Bucky and Tony both groaned.

“You do realize dear old dad could have  _ killed _ you? Like, actually murdered you.” Tony demanded

“You think I didn’t tell him that?” Bucky asked incredulously. “He shows up in--in  _ Italy _ , when I’d left him safe at home, lookin’ like he does,” Bucky flailed his arm to indicate Steve’s general Steve-ness. “And he’s all ‘hey Buck, I’m here to rescue you,’ like nothing’s amiss!”

“I don’t remember saying  _ that _ ,” Steve objected.

Bucky shoved him off the bench. “That’s not the point and you know it.”

“No,” Steve said from where he’d landed sprawled on the floor. “The point  _ is _ that you’ve been coming around leaving vaguely threatening gifts like some great overgrown cat instead of just talking to us.”

“I didn’t--I  _ don’t _ ...know how to fix things with you. After DC.”

Steve sighed. “There’s nothin’ to fix, Buck.”

“But--”

“Capsicle’s absolutely right,” Tony jumped in. “There’s nothing broken, so there’s nothing to fix.”

Bucky opened his mouth to keep arguing, but Tony held up a hand to stop him. 

“I get it. You don’t think you deserve anything from Steve--”

“Or you,” Bucky muttered.

Tony shrugged. “If you say so.” He slid into Steve’s empty spot. “So where are you going tonight now that you’ve committed grand theft...organ?”

Bucky shrugged. “I’ll find someplace.”

“You could stay here,” Tony said. Like it was that easy.

“I don’t know,” Bucky hedged. “It’s...I’m not…”

Tony held up his hands. “I have more than one guest room.”

“Please, Buck, just...stay,” Steve begged, climbing back to his feet.

Bucky’s eyes darted back and forth between them, calculating, but he finally nodded. “I--okay.” He smiled sadly at Steve. “But I’m not--”

Steve waved him off. “You’re here. The rest’ll sort itself out.”

“You think?”

“Sure,” Steve said with a shrug. “Tony’d usually tell you this himself, but he’s a genius.”

“So?”

“So,” Tony scooted closer on the bench and brushed Bucky’s hair gently out of his face. “That means between the tactical genius laying on the floor like a beached fish and me, the polymath smart enough to stay here next to you, there’s not much we can’t solve or subdue.”

“You think?”

Tony nodded. “I know it.”

Bucky smiled, small but genuine, and nodded. “Okay. I--I’ll stay.”


End file.
